


the moon still hung

by RoamingSignals



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Demons, Established Relationship, Extremely Dubious Consent, M/M, Mind Manipulation, Non-Explicit Sex, Obsession, Stalking, Supernatural Elements, Unreliable Narrator, this fic looks bad but it's not that bad because i'm delicate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:02:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27183544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoamingSignals/pseuds/RoamingSignals
Summary: “You can give anything to me,” says a voice in the dark, familiar.The moon howls, and there are hands — something possessive and cold — and Johnny thinks he’s dreaming again but he cannot tell. “What are you trying to take?”“You.”Johnny cannot feel the fear. He cannot feel anything.
Relationships: Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Suh Youngho | Johnny, Nakamoto Yuta/Suh Youngho | Johnny
Comments: 37
Kudos: 122
Collections: NCT Spookfest 2020





	the moon still hung

**Author's Note:**

> THANKS TO ELLIE AND VIVI for reading through this for me. i have never attempted anything unsettling before…this was an attempt at horror that fell into something eerie and dark. not scary! just. ah. not comfortable, which is what i usually go for.
> 
> i tagged as best i knew how! take care of yourselves. here is my best attempt at ooky spooky

The fever runs through Johnny’s blood at a boil. It sees three sunrises, never quite breaking, until his body is drenched in sweat and his limbs have forgotten how to be human. He himself has forgotten how to be human — the world is a murky cloud, reality but a recommendation, and the full moon howls outside like a call for something sinister.

It is the most lucid moment Johnny remembers in several hours, the cold rush the scream sends through his body. Begging.

Johnny must answer.

His husband is asleep at his bedside, hands clutching a hot towel running cold, and his sleep is fitful. His brow twitches and his muscles clench like he’s running from a beast or holding onto sand. He is exhausted, ruined, and does not hear the rustling of sheets, the scream, or the groans as Johnny pulls himself out of a dream. He doesn’t not feel the emptiness as Johnny tumbles from their shared bed and pads out the door.

His husband does not wake. Johnny is not fully awake either. The moon is awake, and it howls at a register only Johnny seems to hear. It screams, high and low and everywhere all at once, so frightening that the stars vanish and leave everything dark save the blinding white of the moon as it calls.

A wakeful Johnny knows better than to enter the woods.

His feet sink into the mud, bare and filthy brown in a matter of moments. His hands are empty, clutching at the last dregs of his fever. His legs wobble, as fitful as a nightmare, and the scream carries on too long before being choked at the source.

Johnny prays for his mind, his sanity, but not for his body. He stumbles forward as the darkness hums around him. There is excitement in the air, a mixture of foreboding and nature’s cruel lack of morality. There is a show tonight, beneath this dark and starless sky, and Johnny is the hero.

The moon does not care about a happy ending.

He does not have to search far for carnage — it is kind enough to wait just beyond his doorstep.

It is not a woman, not a human with a body broken but something smaller and more fragile. Life is sacred no matter the form, but cruelty is even more universal, and the sight of blood covering the undergrowth is enough to cause Johnny’s delicate body to reel.

The fox is laying amongst the red, staring at Johnny with yellow eyes, and says nothing. There is neither scream nor whine nor desperate will to live, no prayer for death, but the bone of its leg is bare and broken and the flesh is torn beyond repair. The smell of ruin burns, sinking into the earth.

It is more dead than alive.

There is a rock, then, in Johnny’s hand, and the pain is ended.

Another moment of lucidity — what caused this wound? Teeth so large and brutal that nothing could survive. Johnny has lived his whole life near these trees, hiding from the shadows that might roam inside, and has never seen the equal.

When he turns, there are burning eyes in the darkness.

A second moment of clear lucidity, of frightful coldness, of pounding chest, and Johnny turns his back on death to run to the sanctity of his home.

* * *

“What is this?” Donghyuck asks when the sun rises, holding the remnants of a dream.

Johnny picks up the bloodstained stone, red under his nails. “I can’t remember,” he whispers. Dreadful.

* * *

They live in a small town, or just outside. It’s tiny, the sort of place where everyone knows everyone and the locals are the crossroads of being tight-lipped and horrible gossips. Johnny has grown up here, running through the streets and learning the cobblestones one by one. He can feel when the wind changes.

It is not often that someone new comes to town, but the people don’t talk about Yuta as much as Johnny might have suspected. Especially considering how thoughtful and charismatic the young man seems to be upon first meeting, Johnny thought he would be the talk of the town.

That is not the case.

The town accepts Yuta quietly, gathering him into the fold so quickly it’s frightening, but Johnny sees Yuta’s smile and cannot blame them.

“You should come over for dinner,” Johnny offers, when Yuta mentions that he lives alone. “My husband is a wonderful cook.”

There is a flash of something over Yuta’s face — perhaps excitement — and his face slips into a pretty smile. “I’m sure he is. I would love to come over.”

Dinner is a pleasant affair. Johnny cleans their small house and Donghyuck cooks all his best dishes and they sing to each other across the kitchen, something sweet. Johnny presses his nose into Donghyuck’s shoulder until Donghyuck laughs, and the knocking on the door finds the residents in good spirits.

“May I come in?” Yuta requests, brandishing a bottle of wine.

“Of course,” Johnny responds, stepping aside.

“Is it uncomfortable for you,” Yuta asks later, when they’re stuffed with roast and drinking spirits, “to live so close to the woods?” His eyes are shining. “I have heard many things about its secrets.”

“Donghyuck has lived in this house all his life,” Johnny says.

“I’ve seen plenty of things,” Donghyuck answers with a laugh, pouring himself another drink. He is shining and comfortable, red high on his cheeks. “But there is nothing so terrifying as old women’s gossip.”

Donghyuck wanders off to bed not long after, wine sending him into a warm trance. Yuta kisses Johnny’s cheek when he leaves, his hands lingering on the doorway. “I am happy to be here with you,” he says with the pretty smile, and perhaps the trance has found its way into Johnny’s body as well.

“We’re happy to have you,” Johnny replies, after a long moment.

The night seems darker when Yuta leaves.

* * *

The burning eyes follow Johnny everywhere.

At the beginning, he does not remember them — they are something wicked from a dream and they appear as such, hidden in the clouds of Johnny’s nightmares until everything turns red and then black and then white with the morning sun.

Donghyuck kisses bad spirits away on the days when Johnny wakes up with fire in his veins.

“What do you dream about?” Donghyuck asks.

“Something cruel,” Johnny replies.

When the eyes trail into the fluid reality, Johnny cannot tell the difference between them. There are in his mirror. They are in his window. They are in his dreams. They are in the shadows as Johnny makes the long drive home.

He can’t remember when the dreams stop being nightmares. Eventually, the eyes burning bring a different feeling.

“What do you dream about?” Yuta asks.

Johnny’s stomach flips. “Something exciting.”

* * *

“I don’t think Yuta likes me very much,” Donghyuck whispers against Johnny’s jaw.

Johnny does not know why Donghyuck would think that when the other man has happened upon their house many nights since the first, praising the food and the company. He says as much, and Donghyuck tucks his chin into Johnny’s shoulder.

“I don’t know.” Donghyuck frowns into the fire crackling beneath their mantle.

“How could anyone not love you?” Johnny asks, arms wrapping around the delightful body of his husband. There is peace here, in this place.

It cannot last.

* * *

Donghyuck’s body is welcoming. It is soft and delicate and strong and sensitive and it rolls and whines and Johnny loves it. Johnny loves him. Johnny loves Donghyuck so fiercely and he feels it in the movement between them.

He sucks marks into Donghyuck’s necks and swallows his sounds and drinks him in deliciously until Donghyuck is more liquid than man, more bruise and beautiful red than untouched skin, more Johnny’s than anything else, and Donghyuck delights in it. Their sheets tangle, their fingers intertwine.

The fog in the window parts and Johnny sees burning eyes.

“What’s wrong?” Donghyuck breathes against his mouth.

“I’m not sure,” Johnny whispers.

“I can make sure you forget,” Donghyuck says, laughing, and that’s all it is. A passing, fleeting moment before Donghyuck’s hands are on him and everything else fades.

The chill lasts longer than the high of loving his husband. Johnny does not sleep — he is afraid of what his dreaming eyes might see.

* * *

“You can give anything to me,” says a voice in the darkness, familiar.

“What are you trying to take?” Johnny asks.

A pretty smile. “You.”

* * *

When Johnny wakes, he cannot feel the fear. Donghyuck’s kisses cannot banish any more spirits.

He has lost something, he thinks.

* * *

Tonight is not the first night Yuta has shown up at their house unannounced, but it is the first night that Donghyuck is not home. “Can I come in?”

“Of course,” Johnny says, stepping aside, and then he hesitates. “Donghyuck is not home. I was heating up leftovers.”

“I do not need to eat,” Yuta replies simply, crossing the threshold. His hand brushes Johnny’s on the way inside. He has a bottle of spirits in his hands, the kind that Donghyuck never likes to drink because it sends him spinning, and Johnny stares at the label as though he never learned how to read.

His stomach is heavy, his brain is ruined, his heart is thumping. The sound of the door closing sounds bizarrely final.

Yuta’s hands are everywhere — they linger _everywhere._ They are on Johnny’s shoulders and his chin and his thigh and his arm. They trail down Johnny’s neck, nails digging into delicate skin, and Johnny shivers.

“Donghyuck will be home soon,” Johnny says by rote. The wine in his belly has set him out to sea.

“No, he won’t,” Yuta promises, pressing closer.

Johnny remembers politely asking Yuta to leave, but he remembers nothing else. He does not remember the door closing or drinking to the bottom of the bottle. But the door is closed and the bottle is empty when Donghyuck shakes him awake in the dark of the new moon. “Why are you drinking?” his husband asks. “Why are you asleep on the couch?” Hands trail down the open buttons of Johnny’s shirt. His face is twisted into something ugly and terrified.

Carefully, lovingly, Johnny cups Donghyuck’s cheek. “I don’t think that Yuta likes you, either,” he whispers in harmony with the crackling of the fireplace.

* * *

Johnny cannot feel the fear. He cannot feel anything.

* * *

“What are you dreaming about?” Donghyuck asks, nearly hysterical.

Johnny’s hand twitches out to touch the welcoming body of his husband. “Right now?” he asks. “I’m not sure.” He tilts his head. “I think I’m dreaming of you, but I can never tell.” Donghyuck feels real, but everything feels real.

There are burning eyes in their bedroom window.

Johnny smiles widely until Donghyuck closes the blinds.

* * *

“You can give anything to me,” says Yuta, familiar

The moon howls, and there are hands — something possessive and cold — and Johnny thinks he’s dreaming again but he cannot tell.

* * *

Yuta shows up on their doorstep every night, now, but Donghyuck does not allow Johnny to open the door.

“Stay,” his husband begs, clinging on to Johnny’s arm when he gets out of bed. “Please. Please stay here with me.” They are locked in their bedroom, the key clutched into Donghyuck’s shaking hands so hard there’s a red copy on his palm. “Don’t let it in.”

“Isn’t that rude?” Johnny asks, confused.

“It can’t come in if you don’t let it, Johnny,” Donghyuck whispers, digging into Johnny’s skin.

Johnny wonders if those eyes are hiding behind the curtains again. Donghyuck keeps them drawn now, but sometimes Johnny peeks outside just to see something burning.

Donghyuck cannot keep Johnny here if he chooses to leave, he isn’t strong enough, but Johnny isn’t strong enough to refuse him. His husband pulls him down, presses his lips desperately into Johnny’s, warm and welcoming — or they would be, if Johnny could pierce through the fog with his bare hands. He cannot.

“I can tell him to go,” Johnny offers, wondering at the tears on Donghyuck’s face.

“No,” Donghyuck says. “I don’t know that you can.”

* * *

Johnny mentions Yuta to the grocer and she does not recall the name. Johnny supposes he can’t begrudge her for that — he can’t remember much of anything, lately.

* * *

Reality is but a recommendation, and Johnny wakes up surrounded by the smell of earth and pine and sharp morning dew. There are scratches on his arms. There is blood on the ground. “Good morning,” Johnny says to no one.

“Good morning,” no one responds, familiar. “You should return to your husband.” There is a strange curve to the voice, and Johnny can recognize it because cruelty is universal. “I’m sure he’s missing you.”

“You’re right.” Johnny misses Donghyuck too, he thinks. “Good bye.”

“Good bye.”

Johnny has never seen true fear on Donghyuck’s face as when he knocks on the door of their home.

“Where have you been?” His voice is hysterical. There are dark circles under his eyes, bruise purple. “Johnny, where the _fuck_ have you been?”

Johnny thinks and finds he has no answer. “I think I was sleepwalking.”

Donghyuck reaches out his hands, pressing one to Johnny’s beating heart. “For three days, Johnny?” he asks quietly, like he’s afraid of who might hear. “You were sleeping walking for _three days?_ ”

“I think,” Johnny replies. He covers Donghyuck’s hand in his and kisses Donghyuck’s knuckles with a smile. “I missed you.”

“I…” Donghyuck’s jaw clenches, his fingers twitches in Johnny’s hold. Carefully, he steps aside and leads Johnny into their living room. “I miss you, too.”

Donghyuck does not kiss him goodnight, only tucks him into bed alone and locks the door behind him.

Johnny sleeps well.

* * *

“Thank you for dinner.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Are we going to let Yuta in today?”

“No.”

“Alright.”

The moon howls.

* * *

“Your husband doesn’t want you to be happy,” Yuta says in the humming darkness. There is a hand under Johnny’s chin.

Johnny’s limbs are heavy, full of lead, and when he tries to move them he almost hears the rattling of chains. “I don’t think that’s true.”

“You’re happy when you’re with me,” Yuta tells him, brushing the hair off of his forehead.

“Alright,” Johnny says, because agreeing is easy and Yuta is always right in this space.

“Donghyuck is a nuisance.”

Johnny says nothing until the hand on his forehead tugs on his hair. “I love him,” he replies, dull.

The dream ends with a howl, and Johnny wakes up with his face pressed into Donghyuck’s chest. His husband rocks him back and forth, singing a song that Johnny has never heard before. It is peaceful. Johnny does not move.

“Do you want to live?” Donghyuck asks him during a quiet moment.

Johnny frowns. “Am I dead?”

“No.” Donghyuck holds Johnny’s face in both hands, his jaw clenched and lip quivering. “My dearest love, you are not done yet.”

“Alright,” he says, because Donghyuck is always right. “I think that would be nice.” He smiles.

* * *

When Johnny looks in the bathroom mirror, his eyes are a murky black and Yuta is waiting behind him, and he sighs into the familiarity of it until Donghyuck bangs on the door so hard the hinges shake.

“Please, let me in.” There are stuttered breaths, so many that it does not sound like Donghyuck at all.

Johnny reaches for the doorknob — when had he locked it? — and Yuta’s hand closes on his wrist.

“He isn’t there, Johnny,” Donghyuck begs. His voice is cracked and broken, high and reedy and it makes Yuta scowl in the mirror. “He isn’t real.”

Johnny can’t tell.

It’s an hour later when Johnny unlatches the lock and finds Donghyuck curled up on the floor. “What are you doing?” he asks.

Donghyuck’s face is round and happy in Johnny’s reality, but it is gaunt here. Gently Johnny traces the protruding cheekbones with his fingers, brushing over his lips and the tears on his cheeks, and when he gets to Donghyuck’s hands he finds blood under the nails.

There are long scratches through the wood of the bathroom door.

“What are you doing?” Johnny asks again.

Donghyuck looks up at Johnny, touching the new marks on his neck and arms, and tells the empty air — “I’m praying.”

* * *

Donghyuck doesn’t leave Johnny alone. He doesn’t go to work any more. He doesn’t let Johnny go to work. He locks the door when they sleep and he puts his hands over Johnny’s ears whenever there is knocking on the door.

Johnny doesn’t mind. He enjoys spending the extra time with Donghyuck, smiling into his skin and listening to him sing strange songs. Donghyuck has taken to lighting candles that make the house smell the way it had when his mother had lived here. It burns Johnny’s nose, sends his brain into a fog.

He likes it.

“Wait for me,” Donghyuck prays.

“I’ll wait for you,” Johnny tells him, kissing the downward curve of his mouth. “I love you.”

The banging on the door gets louder. Johnny does not know why Donghyuck is so afraid of it, why he holds Johnny hard enough to bruise. Yuta is kind. Yuta has never hurt them. Yuta just came over for dinner. It’s been so long since they let him inside. He must be hungry.

“Can I come in?” calls a voice in the darkness, familiar.

Donghyuck’s hand is clammy where it covers Johnny’s mouth. “No,” he says once, loud, and the candles go out.

The knocking is over for the night.

“I don’t know what to do,” Donghyuck admits. He slumps on top of Johnny’s body, pinning him down, burrowing his face in the chest of his husband. It is dark in their living room. It smells like cinders and fragrant wax. Donghyuck’s hair smells of sage and salt.

Johnny doesn’t know either. He holds his husband tightly and sings the song Donghyuck haunts their house with.

They don’t leave each other, falling asleep on the couch, praying.

* * *

“You can give anything to me,” says Donghyuck, spread out on Johnny’s bed. His hair is laying out against the pillow, a soft brown, and his body is warm and soft and bare. The light glints off of his legs and his stomach and his eyes are so kind. He smells sweet, when Johnny presses his face into his shoulder like they have a million times before.

It has been so long since they’ve shared this.

Everything is a haze of hands, of teeth — Donghyuck is ferocious today, his nails clawing up Johnny’s back, his teeth breaking skin on Johnny’s neck. He laughs when they rock together. He screams when the high hits. He smiles into the kisses.

“Anything,” he whispers, licking the blood that trickles down Johnny’s neck. He is warm and sated in Johnny’s arm, and he kisses sweetly.

Somewhere in the house, Johnny hears singing, and then everything shifts sideways.

Donghyuck is crying, thick, sobbing in a way that shakes the earth. He touches the bite at Johnny’s neck and wails. Johnny can do nothing more than hold him, lost and confused. “It will be alright,” he promises, rocking Donghyuck back and forth while Donghyuck clutches desperately at his arms and face and chest. “We are always alright.”

“I don’t know,” Donghyuck says through tears. “I’m tired. Johnny. I don’t know how long I can keep things alright.”

“We have forever,” Johnny says, kissing the knuckles on Donghyuck’s hands. “We’ve always had forever.”

There is a knocking at the door.

Johnny holds Donghyuck until the last candle goes out and the sobbing ceases.

* * *

“Yuta will be coming over for dinner today,” Donghyuck says politely over breakfast. His face is blank but Johnny breaks into a smile.

Johnny hums into his cup of coffee. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen him.”

Donghyuck’s expression cracks. “It hasn’t been that long.” Bitter and dark.

It has been seven months since the last time Yuta came over for dinner. It has been six months since anyone in town recognized the name, and three months since Johnny has gone to town at all. Donghyuck is enough for him, but Johnny thinks some company might be nice.

All day, Donghyuck does not touch a pot or pan in the kitchen. Instead, he spends his entire day rearranging the old furniture until the wood of the floor is bare, digging through boxes until he finds more candles and red chalk and draws pictures on the wood. Johnny sits at the kitchen table, humming songs under his breath with a smile. It really has been such a long time.

The knocking comes as the sun falls and Donghyuck asks Johnny to go up to their bedroom, pushing the key into his hand. “Will you wait for me?” he asks, pressing a kiss into the corner of Johnny’s mouth.

“I’ll wait for you,” Johnny says with a smile. “I love you.”

Donghyuck pulls away. “Go upstairs.” He swallows, his face haunted by ghosts. “I’ll get the door.”

* * *

There is a horrible earthquake. It’s unexpected, a tragedy. Half of the house collapses in on itself, and their neighbors don’t discover the carnage until the next morning.

The rescue crew digs Donghyuck out of the rubble, unconscious but unharmed, and then finds Johnny sitting wide awake on the bed behind a locked door, rocking back and forth with a red copy of the key pressed into his palm.

“Why didn’t you call anyone?” the police demand.

Johnny has not answered any of their questions — has not seemed able to — but he answers this one. “Donghyuck told me to wait for him.” Donghyuck affirms this the next morning, when he wakes up in a white room and pulls the IV from his veins. “I love him.”

They have to move, but Donghyuck seems relieved to leave the house behind. “I think living closer to town would be better,” he says, and Johnny agrees, kissing Donghyuck until the twist of his mouth becomes something pleasant.

“Whatever you want.” Johnny worries about Donghyuck’s health. He barely sleeps, his eyes sunken into his skull, and the weight he’s lost is alarming. “Whatever you think is best, I’ll do for you.”

Donghyuck always asks Johnny how he feels — how he sleeps — but Johnny feels better than he has in a long time. He takes care of Donghyuck and sleeps well, eats well, and spends a lot of time on the porch of their new house in the middle of town. He misses the woods sometimes, laughs when the locals tell him he’s crazy for not believing their superstitions. “Do you ever miss your childhood home?” he asks Donghyuck.

“No,” his husband always replies, to varying degrees of distress, until Johnny stops asking.

They travel back to the house a single time, hand in hand, to collect the belongings they left behind.

Their living room is ruined, but oddly it is the only thing unsalvageable. The rest of the house stands tall. When Johnny looks at it from the outside, it is almost as if something had taken a bite of it, leaving dark and empty space. Donghyuck climbs the stairs with heavy steps, pulling Johnny behind.

They make quick work of the packing. There is something incredibly unsettling about this place — Johnny assumes it’s the tragedy of it, the way it is so close to something he remembers and yet wholly different in the face of ruin. The broken space of their living room reeks of sulfur and sage, and there is something oozing out of the floorboards that makes Johnny’s head hurt.

“Hurry up,” Donghyuck says with a whine, when he finds Johnny staring at it. His hands dig into Johnny’s arm. “I’m hungry.”

Johnny turns to laugh at him and finds burning eyes. Donghyuck gives him a pretty smile.

The darkness hums.

They fall into their bed, exhausted from dealing with the movers, from dealing with the tragedy, and Johnny grins into Donghyuck’s body, holds him close and feels the stuttering heartbeat in his chest. “I love you,” he whispers once the lights are off, the entire room flickering with only the light of a candle. “I want to give you everything.”

“You can give anything to me,” says Donghyuck in the darkness.

“What do you want to take?”

Johnny thinks he would give all of himself to Donghyuck again and again, until the world is over and forever crashes into the earth.

Donghyuck’s nails dig red trails down Johnny’s back, and when he speaks is soft and simple into Johnny’s waiting ear. “You.”

The candle goes out and Johnny is living.

**Author's Note:**

> [¬º-°]¬ oo o OOOO Ooooo


End file.
